geegee

@snatcher did you play the FM? @computertech82 Your review is almost identical to that of the other review bomber, neonstyle, who didn't play the FM for even 5 seconds but who noclipped to an area where he airdropped before the same door which confounds you. How did you get to that door if you didn't use a rope arrow in the vents? If you were a bit observant and were actually trying to play the FM you might've noticed that the building with that confounding door has two floors, the second of which is ringed by a wooden balustrade where a well placed rope arrow (!!) allows the nimble or even not so very nimble player an entrance to a hall where there's a shooting gallery of open windows to use the water arrows (the player should have 20 or more of them by now) to extinguish the confounding torches. There's also a keyed (!!! how awful !!!) door up there where the thoughtful player might expect a key might be snagged from off the ass of one of the guards sitting up ahead playing poker. That allows the easiest entrance. But oh what the hell. Once targeted by bombers ever targeted and there's nothing to do about it. In a post above I appended an edit to a response to vozka that, since it was an edit, probably went unnoticed so I'll repeat it here since it's really my last word for the time being, given my circumstances of having to learn how to edit all over again (yes, I found myself in a situation where I lost the ability to do even basics like change the ambient light setting! and a lot of the necessary fixes are difficult). @vozka I can now give a more coherent reply and I'm recovering nicely. I agree with every point of the critique and I'm in a quandary about how I should go about applying fixes. I think your preamble to the actual critique shows an exact understanding of what I was attempting to do in the FM. You understand that it is story driven. You understood the main elements of the story, that basically a farm boy of pagan background entrusts himself with a mission. His village needs help. Because he's earned a certain bad reputation and fits the bills requirement for having daring and a certain amount of cunning, so the mission is a natural fit; also amongst other things he wants to earn himself a good name. He has friends to help him along the way, and makes friends of friends along the road of the pagans. The FM uses devices to distinguish the pagans from the enemy they face and divides the space into distinct enemy and pagan areas, and areas in between. The pagans are opposed by corrupt nobles and their army of fundamentalist Builders, as corrupt as the nobles they serve. It's very black and white. Then there's the city guard who, being ousted from real power by the Builders are resentful and won't help the Builders and will ignore the player unless attacked or the player is caught trespassing in their inner court. That's about it. The critique mentions some gameplay elements that detract from the story and I agree about those. It also mentions gameworld failings that interfere with enjoyment, with gameflow and immersion. It seems to me that to fix these flaws will require a total rewrite of the FM, rebuilding the entire thing. For example, I understand the problems mentioned w.r.t. the lighting and know how to fix them, or at least bandage them over so technically there's no apparent problem. But I have a notion that the not so apparent problem here is in what's being lit. That there should be a rearrangement of things so light can be more focused and contrasted with the dark. I'm only starting to think through ways that I might do this. Needless to say anything like this would take time, probably a year, and I'm not sure whether I'm up to it. I've been playing a new mission by Kingsal and know I haven't anything near that level of skill. IMO the FM is unplayable right now. Actually I had asked that it be removed from the TDM database. I don't like the idea of leaving a blot. Thank you again.

This is absolutely beautiful. Totally daunting, but wow does it ever show what can be done with this new darkmod engine.

@datiswous I haven't yet tried out the high end performance. Always so far it's been dumbed down by the lower end samsung monitor interface. I've got some cognitive problems setting this up, so perhaps this'll take about a month or so to get past that. It's a bitch.

@datiswous @vozka I recently upgraded from my old geforce 1060 desktop to an azus rog strix scar something or other with a 12th Gen Intel(R) Core(TM) i9-12900H 2.50 GHz with 16.0 GB (15.7 GB usable) RAM and an Intel Geforce 1080Ti card of which I'm unsure of exact values but must be fairly high. I also upgraded to a 55 inch samsung 4K monitor. I instantly noticed a huge increase in brightness of my WIP. When using the 55 inch monitor I'm forced to a 1920 x 1080 resolution with no bells and whistles. No HDR. I haven't tried playing with the 55 inch monitor turned off and the strix scar in native mode. Noticing these huge differences for the first time I wonder what the best guideline would be for correcting lighting for all or most darkmod gameplay?

@vozka vozka thank you for this excellent review. I'm sorry to say I can't give much of a reply as I'm suffering severe health and cognitive problems. Most likely this is temporary but for now I'm in a fix. __________________________ @vozka I can now give a more coherent reply and I'm recovering nicely. I agree with every point of the critique and I'm in a quandary about how I should go about applying fixes. I think your preamble to the actual critique shows an exact understanding of what I was attempting to do in the FM. You understand that it is story driven. You understood the main elements of the story, that basically a farm boy of pagan background entrusts himself with a mission. His village needs help. Because he's earned a certain bad reputation and fits the bills requirement for having daring and a certain amount of cunning, so the mission is a natural fit; also amongst other things he wants to earn himself a good name. He has friends to help him along the way, and makes friends of friends along the road of the pagans. The FM uses devices to distinguish the pagans from the enemy they face and divides the space into distinct enemy and pagan areas, and areas in between. The pagans are opposed by corrupt nobles and their army of fundamentalist Builders, as corrupt as the nobles they serve. It's very black and white. Then there's the city guard who, being ousted from real power by the Builders are resentful and won't help the Builders and will ignore the player unless attacked or the player is caught trespassing in their inner court. That's about it. The critique mentions some gameplay elements that detract from the story and I agree about those. It also mentions gameworld failings that interfere with enjoyment, with gameflow and immersion. It seems to me that to fix these flaws will require a total rewrite of the FM, rebuilding the entire thing. For example, I understand the problems mentioned w.r.t. the lighting and know how to fix them, or at least bandage them over so technically there's no apparent problem. But I have a notion that the not so apparent problem here is in what's being lit. That there should be a rearrangement of things so light can be more focused and contrasted with the dark. I'm only starting to think through ways that I might do this. Needless to say anything like this would take time, probably a year, and I'm not sure whether I'm up to it. I've been playing a new mission by Kingsal and know I haven't anything near that level of skill. IMO the FM is unplayable right now. Actually I had asked that it be removed from the TDM database. I don't like the idea of leaving a blot. Thank you again.

I didn't wonder about it for a second! But an amusing troll. I was hoping that his "item_respawn.ini" script, recoded as a .dll, would be workable so I could download it and use it in my WIP. I'd like to use it on keys, which my WIP should have a shitload of. I could set a random item respawn time on the keys, have the keys respawn in random and difficult to find places, and target the doors to relock when the keys are respawned!

22 keys. That's a lot, yes, but it's a large mission and locking unpickable doors was one of the only ways available to control the players movements. In comparison, Briarwood Manor, a much smaller mission, has 9 keys. Imagine that! The mission I'm currently working on has zero keys, so far. It may not need any!

*&rT!!!! My apologies! I'd never have played on and completed the mission with that on my screen. It's a known problem. It's very similar problem to the one where a player opens a chest and can't frob the contents because, as the chest door is opening but before it's fully opened the player hit frob again, messing up the "target set frobable" entity put inside the chest to protect the contents being frobbed before the chest is opened. On all the doors with a message "needs X key" I put a delay on refrobbing the door so the door can fully open before the player is allowed to frob it again. This gives time for all the triggers and relays and so on to do their work, removing the message permanently. However I missed putting the delay on the junk room door. That'll be fixed when I get the motivation to do an update. Thanks for your report on the problem.

I don't think so. It fits the desired conclusion while leaping right over any distracting ideas that the conclusion might not be right. What you describe is an emulator. You look at it from a consumer perspective - as in a Turing test situation where the machine passes the test when in a short blind run an "evaluator" can't tell the difference between human and machine. We have bots right now that can pass such a "test" as "evaluated" by millions of internet users. That doesn't make the bots capable of thinking, intuition, creativity or even anything in the same ball park. Most bots seem to be run by assholes. So, who runs an authoritative test of that sort? Beyond an "I think therefore I am" declaration, individual humans can't even prove that other consciousness's exist. That's the nature of subjectivity, awareness, and ultimately of thinking, intuition, creativity. Who decided that thinking, intuition and creativity (as emulated by a machine) should imitate e.g. Glenham Tower or some other human inspired art, perhaps pumping out thousands of similar FMs that all have (according to your desired conclusion, stated at the start) the same mark of inspiration and execution? What's the motivation of the machine? I don't go along with the other conclusion OrbWeaver asserts as fact - that connections of neurons in the human brain are somehow similar to the hard electric connections of silicon chips flipping on/off and hence that the brain, and subsequently thinking, intuition,..., are likewise the same, or will be when the hardware and software is ramped up. I don't think so. On the other hand, I'm not so dubious that bio engineering of the kind producing (thinking) Blade Runner replicants will soon enough be possible. I think that's a different concept, though.

"There is no magic, there is no "soul"." Picasso's Guernica. Anything by Klee. I agree with chakkman and I don't think he's making an argument for the existence of a "soul" or "magic", but rather for natural causes. Humans are living creatures and product of eons of evolution and with it comes biological imperatives, to live, to propagate and to protect and provide for ones offspring and ones community. Math logic is a wonderful invention but almost by definition it is mindless. It's a tool. A magnificent tool. A few days ago I replayed Sotha's Glenham Tower. I played it years ago and forgot all the details - just a memory that it was good bookmarked in my skull as being an FM had "it". My replay was just as immersive as the first playthrough even though my memory prompted me to anticipate as I played along. I'm unsure if I used any of the ammo. Anyway I rate this FM as being close to perfect. I tend to be generous in my reviews and there are several FMs that I rate that high. I think it shows a skill that's beyond my own abilities. But what is that skill? How can I know what it is, since it's beyond me? I can deconstruct the map and recreate the gameplay along different lines, throwing in glitz like volumetric lights and so on, and come up with something unspeakable. By proceeding that way, no matter what kind of glitz I throw in, what kind of diversions and filler, what kind of joy all this copy/pasting gives me, I'm not matching the "skill" that went into making Glenham.

This is the problem, then. She's sitting (at the table) at her first path corner which says to sit 7 seconds then get up and walk to the horse, wait 5 seconds then turn back to sit at the table 7 secs, then repeat. Dropping the letter in the box will trigger the "follow Gwyneth" message and it will reset the path corner at the horse so it now points to a path corner at the box, which Gwyneth will now go to and then be directed on a new path sequence. Since Gwyneth is immobile at the table, she isn't following the horse/table path in the first place so can't be redirected. You're well into the FM at this point having even completed some optional manor objectives (the skulls) so it bothers me that you're stuck here! I haven't a clue how to fix your playthrough except you can try one thing. Make sure to save your savegames! Then delete your AT1: Lucy's quest FM folder and redownload the FM from the in-game updater. Now load your savegames and see if Gwyneth is moving along the path. If she's moving on her path, drop the letter in the box. If you've already dropped it before the savegame, pick it up and drop it again. That probably won't work, tho'. My guess is that Gwyneth will still be immobile, the savegame saving that state. (the overwritten message "follow Gwyneth" is just bad timing for the message on my part)

Dropping the "sealed" letter from Aeden to Gwyneth in the box should trigger the critical events. The instruction "follow Gwyneth" appears after you drop it. Gwyneth doesn't react instantly. Her short patrol back and forth from the table to the horse in the barn will now be changed. When she next reaches the horse (which takes more or less time depending on where she was on the path when you dropped the sealed letter) she'll be redirected to go to the drop box, bend down to reach in and then stand for a second or two, after which she'll run out of the barn, through the kitchen area and out the back and then over to the fire near the gazebo. She'll go through various animations, call several other farmworkers for a conference, and when the show is over some stuff will be left on the nearby table: more water arrows, a key, a couple special "Airmid's water" (2 minute timespan - more powerful than "holy water" as it always kills undead with one hit), and a note. If this isn't happening after you drop the right note in the drop-box then there's a glitch of some kind that I haven't a clue how to fix.

There's only one way to go after you rattled the blocked grate to that workshop (there's no way in there yet). Turn around, there's an exit grate-door right there!! Exit the ducts through that grate-door.

https://wiki.thedarkmod.com/index.php?title=Console_Useful_Controls Open console with "CTRL + ALT + ~" When the console screen comes up type "noclip" and hit escape. To exit noclip mode open console and type "noclip" again. To make this more automatic do this: Create a text file called "autocommands.cfg" in the TDM root folder and put in the line seta com_allowConsole 1 Now when TDM starts the console can be opened by simply typing "~" (or without the shift just "`"). Better yet, in autocommands.cfg also include the lines bind F7 notarget bind F8 noclip and then you can just toggle noclip and notarget on/off in game.

That's odd. Nobody else has reported that problem and I've never encountered it. Are you sure the dungeon key is selected when you try to frob the door? If all else fails and you don't have a good savegame to restart from (TDM has two quicksave backup slots) you can open the console and type 'noclip', clip past the door then type 'noclip' again to toggle it off. For this one time use this cheat won't break the game - and since you did grab the key off Scarletbotham's belt it isn't really a cheat. Apologies for this but I don't know the cause of your problem and can't fix it. What's the url of the video of the gameplay? eta: I found the video playthrough by Boy Lag. It's brutal listening to the critique. Yet I have to say, I think the critique is excellent. It's also eye opening to watch someone else play the FM.

After exiting the vents to the Hoppie area you can't go back that way. You can't climb back up the vents. This shouldn't block your game as there's no reason to go back that way. If you missed any loot, which is likely as some is well hidden, you can get it later by using other routes that open up. But at this point in your playthrough I suggest just continuing to play the FM.

@snatcher Hey thanks for the upbeat reaction! It's all for fun

Apologies but I don't know how to add something to the bugtracker. atdm:playertools_lockpick_snake and triangle don't show up in the create entity/playertools list. They do in v3.0 and v2.14

You realize that you've hijacked both Kukutoo's topic and idea for a contribution? You've turned the discussion toward you and your patch, your new plans for in-game maps and whatever - even though this is a completely different idea than that originally explained? I was discussing Kukutoo's map. I agree with those who think you should start your own thread so you can talk about your idea for adding a map to your patch.

I think the original topic has been somewhat derailed. Nothing is said about this being in the same ballpark as official or definitive or that anything about it should be included in game maps or rigidly adhered to by mappers. For my part I was pleased to see that Scarletbotham's Manor was correctly located in an area near the "Celtic" land. I consider "Celtic" to be a fictive word in these romanticized fictional settings. A lot of the problems "is Bridgeport in France?" etc. can be solved by erasing the larger Mediterranean from the map, including the distinctive boot of Italy. And "Corsica". Make the boundaries vague, like how dragons mark unexplored areas in some old maps.

That's really good! Looking at the map, it seems the location for the FM I'm currently working on should be just inside the inlet at North Point on the NW coast. Hmmm, what FM references North Point?

The problem happens when there's an atdm:target_set_frobable inside a chest or drawer or whatever, targeted by the lid or drawer. The contents can't be frobbed until the lid or door is fully opened and the atdm:target_set_frobable flips the switch on the loot from unfrobable to frobable. If the door opening is interrupted before fully opening the player gets the glitch. This happens very easily on stuff like desk drawers where the player is standing right in front and the drawer stops when it hits the player. A way to avoid the glitch is to set the spawnarg "push_player" to "1" (default 0) so the drawer or whatever will push the player aside and continue opening.

It's been a long time since I played FC 3 and I remember little. I did enjoy FC 3 but it seems to me that it added an ugly crafting system and also little icons, which to me were distractions. Nothing like the FC 1 binoculars, which were immersive.

I thought Far Cry 1 was an excellent game - and it still is - and it was groundbreaking at the time. Any negatives I can think of are far outweighed by the positives. The central characters, Jack and Val, were funny as hell and I was instantly immersed. The game continued getting better right to the end. By the time Far Cry 5 came out I was pretty much done. It felt like a by-the-numbers thing. It's like after the original Far Cry the "franchise" took a wrong turn, away from what made the original game spark.

@Thiefette I think everyone has problems with keys, hidden switches, puzzles, machines where the player has to find all the parts then figure out what to do with them... It's rare that I play a game and don't check out google at least once. I think a big part of it is the quasi-realistic 3D environment. The player enjoys the newness of each area but after searching out a key or something it gets old fast and increasingly frustrating. Your gameplay shouldn't be broken. But you'd have truly been stuck if you hadn't asked for help because you did take a wrong turn that you shouldn't have been able to (have to fix that in an update). Just drop the Airmid staff in the Hut dropbox to open the way and collect the all important note to Gwyneth (now on stump in front of Hut) and take it to her drop box in the barn. Oh, and remember there are teleport stations between grotto<->farm and farm<->hut, which makes going back and forth a bit quicker.